The 2018 SEAL Research Grants will support research across a broad range of subjects, including the Green Climate Fund, the impact of wildfires on forests’ carbon carrying capacity, designing environmental policies that stimulate corporate innovation, developing bipartisan support for climate change policies, and modeling potential citizen responses to the phase-out of fossil fuels.

The selection process prioritized research with broad promising impact, high potential for informing environmental public policy, and strong clarity of purpose.

“We are honored to help support these talented researchers,” said Matt Harney, founder of the SEAL Awards. “Facing our long-term environmental challenges requires real and immediate investment in academic research. Given the severe lack of funding researchers face today, we think it is imperative that the private sector should demonstrate real ‘corporate social responsibility’ and better support academic research.”

In addition to SEAL’s own organizational funding of the grants, 100% of the amounts raised from SEAL’s 2017 Business Sustainability Awards were contributed to the grant initiative.

In order to maximize the visibility of the grant program among environmental researchers, the SEAL Awards partnered with Instrumentl, a Y Combinator backed grant funding and application platform, to manage the application process.

SEAL’s 2018 grants build upon the 2017 research grants, which funded environmental researchers at 7 world-class institutions, including Harvard, MIT, and UCLA.

Instrumentl automates the grants process for researchers and nonprofits. Built by former researchers and backed by some of Silicon Valley’s top investors, Instrumentl is the #1 tool for finding and applying to grants.